Cold fusion still under consideration

Cold fusion is back at the American Chemical Society

The story above about cold fusion from news@nature is interesting for what it says about the open-mindedness of science. Some extracts:

After an 18-year hiatus, the American Chemical Society (ACS) seems to be warming to cold fusion. Today that society is holding a symposium at their national meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on 'low-energy nuclear reactions', the official name for cold fusion....

Mosier-Boss presented her team's latest results with a technique called co-deposition, where they electrochemically deposit palladium onto a cathode in the presence of deuterium — a heavy isotope of hydrogen. During their electrochemical reactions they have seen mini explosions, evidence for neutron and tritium production, and a warming of the cell that can't be accounted for by normal chemistry, they say — although they are careful to avoid the 'CF' words.

"We have shown it's possible to stimulate nuclear reactions by electrochemical methods," says Gordon. Others say this conclusion is premature. But they have published some 16 papers over the past 18 years, including one earlier this year1.

Miles is also careful to avoid using the words 'cold fusion'. "There are code names you can use," he says. In 2004 Miles and colleagues were granted a US patent for a palladium material doped with boron for use in low-energy nuclear reactions, but if the patent application contained the CF words it would never have been granted, Miles says. "We kind of disguised what we did."

There was also a 2004 review by the Department of Energy that was inconclusive.

It puzzles me that some scientists are so sceptical about this. If there are experiments still showing inconclusive results, aren't they curious to get to the bottom of what is causing the anomalies?

The path of science is not immune from the influence of the personalities who conduct it, but I feel there are many who don't like to admit this.